Well, here’s even more ugliness from America’s penis. The state of Florida — currently presided over by a bootlicker wearing boot lifts — has decided the best way to protect its war on women is to harass and intimidate residents who support reproductive rights.
Florida is reportedly sending police officers to the homes of people who signed a petition supporting an abortion rights ballot initiative.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration has begun investigating thousands of verified signatures that helped to put a state constitutional amendment protecting the right to abortion on the ballot in November. The amendment would overturn Florida’s current six-week abortion ban.
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Multiple residents in Lee County have reported being visited by law enforcement following up on their petition signatures.
This is a bold [read: fascist] response to suspected petition fraud. Suspected fraud like this has almost always been handled in far less invasive fashion. At worst, it’s usually just a handful of subpoenas. In most cases, the state approaches the court to ask it to invalidate the ballot measure.
But in Florida, the new thing is sending investigators to people’s houses with a folder full of ballot supporters’ personal information. Here’s what Florida resident Isaac Menasche observed when a law enforcement officer showed up at his house to question him about his ballot measure signature.
“The experience left me shaken. What troubled me was he had a folder on me containing my personal information—about 10 pages. I saw a copy of my drivers license and copy of the petition I signed. It was obvious to me that a significant effort was exerted to determine if indeed I had signed the petition.”
If this seems melodramatic, ask yourself how you would respond if a law enforcement officer showed up at your house and started asking questions about your support for political issues and candidates — especially while flipping through some sort of dossier you’d rightfully be surprised to find the state had compiled on you.
This is definitely not normal behavior. State governments generally don’t handle questionable ballot initiatives this way. But Ron DeSantis doesn’t want his anti-abortion law undone by the will of the people. And that means the people supporting this measure must be oppressed, if not actually suppressed.
The petition for the ballot measure supporting abortion until viability cleared the 900,000 signature mark by over 100,000 signatures. With his petty fiefdom threatened, Governor DeSantis has weaponized the state’s law enforcement agencies to quell this particular dissent, as the Tampa Bay Times reports.
The officer’s visit appears to be part of a broad — and unusual — effort by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to inspect thousands of already verified and validated petitions for Amendment 4 in the final two months before Election Day. The amendment would overturn Florida’s six-week abortion ban by proposing to protect abortion access in Florida until viability.
Since last week, DeSantis’ secretary of state has ordered elections supervisors in at least four counties to send to Tallahassee at least 36,000 petition forms already deemed to have been signed by real people.
Additionally, a spokesperson for the governor’s office said it would be referring this to the state’s Department of Law Enforcement. Whether or not that has happened yet is unclear. The DLE has so far refused to comment on this highly unusual move by the state government.
DeSantis and his supporters in the legislature aren’t willing to engage in fair fights. When opposition arises, DeSantis and his enablers are quick to suppress it. Case in point: the governor’s firing of district attorneys who opposed his unconstitutional mandates and tough-on-crime antics. Now, there’s this: blatant voter intimidation to salvage an abortion ban that a considerable number of state residents don’t support.
This isn’t outlier behavior. This is the Republican party in its current form. Donald Trump spent the weekend inciting violence if the election didn’t go his way and promising bloodshed to enforce his mass deportation plans. And we all know DeSantis and his office would never engage in tactics like these if the alleged fraudulent activity involved ballot measures or candidates DeSantis supports. This is just bog-standard evil. Unfortunately, it’s the banal evils that open the door for the more horrific evils — you know, things like genocide and mass imprisonment of the government’s enemies. This is just another Overton Window being opened to see what the masses are willing to tolerate from their government.
